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The Tell: The Little Clues That Reveal Big Truths about Who We Are

Matthew Hertenstein (Author of The Tell) - Goodreads

"Probing our ability to communicate nonverbally is hardly a new psychological tack," notes a story in the March/April 2013 edition of Psychology Today, adding that "researchers have long documented the complex emotions and desires that our posture, motions, and expressions reveal. Yet until recently, the idea that people can impart and interpret emotional content via another nonverbal modality -- touch -- seemed iffy, even to researchers, such as DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, who study it."

Psychologist Matthew Hertenstein () has empirically supported some of the critical points of Calo’s relational model which requires the use of safe touch. With so many Americans drifting to a preference of cyber relationships it may not be surprising that the United States lags behind many other countries when it comes to understanding and harnessing the power of human to human touch and connection. In one of Hertenstein’s publications, 70 percent of strangers could communicate emotion with one another through nothing more than a touch. Researchers have also found that a supportive touch can ease pain, alleviate stress and encourage peers to participate in class. It might be as simple as a pat on the back, a gentle hug or a supportive touch on the arm. These gestures may seem small, but research shows more and more that touch is a powerful way to communicate emotion and acceptance. Calo students regularly receive peer-peer and staff-student safe touch (defined as side hugs or touch on the upper back or arms).

such as DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, ..

MATTHEW
HERTENSTEIN
DEPAUW UNIVERSITY

Matthew Hertenstein | Kirkus Reviews

Clearly, some kinds of touching are always inappropriate—at school or anyplace. But outlawing touching of any kind could have “a higher cost” than anyone imagines. That’s what researcher Matthew Hertenstein, an associate professor of psychology at DePauw University believes.

December 11, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — "Say cheese and stay married? Yes, according to Matthew Hertenstein, a psychology professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.," notes this weekend's New York Times Magazine. Dr. Hertenstein, whose research on smiles and divorce received worldwide attention in the spring, is cited in the publication's "Ninth Annual Year in Ideas." As the editors put it, "Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 -- the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather."

Download The Tell by Matthew Hertenstein | eMusic

The expression of sympathy, Darwin observed, was to be found in mammalian patterns of tactile contact. Inspired by this observation, Matthew Hertenstein and I conducted a recent of emotion and touch that was as much a strange act of performance art as hardheaded science. Two participants, a toucher and touchee, sat on opposite sides of a barrier that we built in a laboratory room. They therefore could not see nor hear one another, and could only communicate via that five digit wonder, the hand, making contact on skin. The touchee bravely poked his or her arm through a curtain-covered opening in the barrier, and received 12 different touches to the forearm from the toucher, who in each instance was trying to communicate a different emotion. For each touch, the touchee guessed which emotion was being conveyed. With one second touches to the forearm, our participants could reliably communicate sympathy, , and with rates of accuracy seven times as high as those produced by chance guessing.

Probing our ability to communicate nonverbally is hardly a new psychological tack; researchers have long documented the complex emotions and desires that our posture, motions, and expressions reveal. Yet until recently, the idea that people can impart and interpret emotional content via another nonverbal modality—touch—seemed iffy, even to researchers, such as DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, who study it. In 2009, he demonstrated that we have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone. In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch. Many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. "This is a touch-phobic society," he says. "We're not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily."